The Elder Scrolls VI – Official Announcement Teaser

It's official. So here is what we know so far (and what is rumored) about The Elder Scrolls 6.

At this point, any simple raising of a Todd Howard eyebrow is being desperately scrutinized for clues about highly anticipated Elder Scrolls 6. The great news is, after years of waiting for a proper announcement, we finally got official confirmation at Bethesda's E3 2018 showcase. The Elder Scrolls 6 is, I repeat IS in development.

So what is the release date? Where in Tamriel is it take place? Among other questions... For now, Bethesda is not ready to share such details, but here is everything we know about The Elder Scrolls 6 at this point, based on rumors, interviews about the release date, location, and more. Keep track of Total Format for updates as we learn more.

The Elder Scrolls 6 has been officially announced

While we all knew that The Elder Scrolls 6 would come about eventually, we have all been waiting a long time for Bethesda to announce where on their list of priorities it was, and that it is actively being developed. That finally happened, as Todd Howard himself introduced the teaser at E3 2018.

How far along is The Elder Scrolls 6's development?

Before showing the teaser trailer for The Elder Scrolls 6 at E3, Todd Howard showed the trailer for Starfield, Bethesda's first new wholly original franchise in 25 years. We don't know much about Starfield yet, but we do know that it will be coming out before The Elder Scrolls 6 does.

"Starfield is a game we've spent years thinking about and working on, something we feel uniquely positioned to pull off, and we're incredibly excited about," Howard said. "But we're also building toward the game after that... and it's the one you keep asking about."

That means Bethesda likely won't be devoted to fully working on The Elder Scrolls 6 until after Starfield hits the shops, which puts it quite a way away, years even. Howard backed that up a little further into E3 2018, saying that The Elder Scrolls 6 is in pre-production, while Starfield is currently playable. "We can't wait to have everybody be able to play this game," he said. "But that's us, too. We want to play it."

What else have we heard about the next Elder Scrolls in the past?

In 2016, Bethesda flatly stated that it wasn't working on the game. That's more or less been the official company line for years. In 2017, Pete Hines reiterated his "not yet" response when asked about TES6's progress after the release of Skyrim: Special Edition rekindled the hunger for more news. "There's still two major, multiplatform releases that the team has to work on first, and so TES6 isn't happening until those games happen," Hines said in a interview. "Big, multiplatform, AAA stuff that they do takes multiple years, so you can do the math. It ain't anytime soon."

So now we know that Hines was referring to Fallout 76 and Starfield. We can probably expect, then, that we won't hear much more about The Elder Scrolls 6 until both of those have released, at which point it will become Bethesda's focus and no doubt news will star being released much more.

Another factor prolonging 6's debut is that Howard's crew doesn't want to be known as just the Elder Fallout Guys. "I think Todd and his team have earned the right, given the quality of this stuff, to be able to say, 'We know everybody really wants 6, but we as creative people want to be able to do stuff that we're really passionate about,'" Hines explained to GameSpot last year. "They wanted to be able to self-determine things they worked on next, whether it was existing stuff or whether it was new IP."

Clearly, as much as they may want to get back to TES, the team at Bethesda Game Studios are excited about their first big online game in Fallout 76, and its singleplayer space RPG. But there is another reason it is taking so long. In 2016, Howard suggested that the technology needed to create Bethesda's vision for The Elder Scrolls 6 just isn't here yet.

"I could sit here and explain the game to you, and you would say, 'That sounds like you don't even have the technology, how long is that going to take?'" he said. "And so it's something that's going to take a lot of time, what we have in mind for that game."

What is The Elder Scrolls 6's release date?

Years away. It's not coming until after Starfield, Bethesda's next big project, which itself has no release date and only a teaser trailer. Full development on The Elder Scrolls 6 likely won't start until that project is finished, which will most likely put The Elder Scrolls 6's release date sometime in the early 2020s. Yeah, that's a lot of new characters to play on Skyrim in the meatime, we know...

Oblivion, Fallout 4, and Skyrim were shown off in near-finished states with relatively small waits leading up to their launches (Oblivion was scheduled for a November 2005 release; it was delayed to March 2006), and Bethesda is probably priming TES6 for a similar sequence. Hines said in 2016 that the next Elder Scrolls won't be teased along both as a mark of quality and as a balm for the development team to craft the game proper instead of diverting resources for vertical slice demos. That means the shot of some mountains could be the last we see of The Elder Scrolls 6 until much of the game is actually built.

Where does The Elder Scrolls 6 take place?

With very little information available, it really is guess work, Elder Scrolls fans have been picking apart the very brief E3 2018 teaser for clues. Todd Howard suggested that clues do indeed exist, saying the teaser contains "hints at where it's set." The community has run with that.

We have had a go at figuring out the setting of The Elder Scrolls 6. Is it High Rock? It's a reasonable thing to guess, and currently the most popular theory. The trailer shows rocks, and appears to be high. That's not quite enough to be sure, though. TES geography changes quite a bit over time, and High Rock has already been covered by the early games. So have Hammerfell, Morrowind, Cyrodiil, and Skyrim. If TES6 is to take us somewhere new, which it may not, that mainly leaves Valenwood, Elsweyr, and Black Marsh, home of the Wood Elves, Khajiit, and Argonians, respectively. (We're not counting The Elder Scrolls Online here.)

Elsweyr is a tiny possibility. For one thing, it doesn't show up a lot, so there's lots of room to fill in blanks. Secondly, it's the Khajiit's homeland, and it might make sense to focus on one of Skyrim's most popular races. That said, we're doubtful. There could be mountains in Elsweyr, but we'd have expected to see something tropical if it were really the setting.

Black Marsh is probably a no. The teaser looks nothing like it. Valenwood also feels unlikely, as we know it to be full of swampland. Granted, the teaser could've been intentionally misleading.

We can't rule out that we might be headed back to somewhere already covered, of course. Thanks to The Elder Scrolls Online, the range of uncharted territory in Tamriel is shrinking. That could either prompt TES6 to boldly cast its direction overseas, such as to the mysterious continent of Akavir, an exotic land hosting friendly-sounding races such as the Snow Demons of Kamal and the vampiric, snake-like Tsaesci. Or it could drive Bethesda to revisit a previous province, like High Rock, which again is the most popular guess...

One thing a lot of people have been looking at is the text of the title, many are saying that looks like Dwemer text... And yes, it does... Coiuld we be seeing the Dwemer in their glory?

We'll post more when we know more, but in the meantime, let the rumour building begin in earnest..... Very much looking forward to it, what ever shape it takes, where ever it turns out to be and whatever they do with the game, it will surely be another epic, although they have big shoes to fit into following Oblivion and Skyrim... For now, enjoy the little teaser trailer.

Welcome to Total Format. Covering game news, videos, galleries, community forums and an ever growing database of game information for consoles, PC, handheld and mobile devices as well as an extensive range of MMORPG type games. The site is currently being given a massive overhaul, so please bare with us while everything is being put in place. Some features will not be fully available until the overhaul is complete. Please stop by regularly.